Cursed Infection
by Tellytubby101
Summary: Luke. G. - "My life was like one of those terrible comics you see on the shelf of a newsstand: 'Average bookstore owner by day, fierce werewolf by night.' Strangest of all, it's not that far from reality."


_**Cursed Infection.**_

**A/N: Remus Lupin, Jacob Black, and Lucian Graymark: what could these three guys have in common? ***_**Are they are all members of the Country Club?***_** Err, no. These guys are all **_**werewolves.**_** *Insert random wolf whistle*.**

**But for this story, we're just diving into the mind of Lucian Graymark (a.k.a. Luke Garroway). This is set one or two years after he found Jocelyn again, disguised as a normal mundane human. **

**I will generally refer to him as Lucian because he'd still be a while off being fully used to the alter-ego "Luke". Well, he'd answer to Luke, but in his mind, I bet he still would call himself Lucian. That's what I think, so I'm sticking to it.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Mortal Instruments, I probably wouldn't have named the bad guy (Valentine) after a holiday celebrating love... **

**οοʘοο**

**Lucian/Luke POV**

_My life was like one of those terrible comics you see on the shelf of a newsstand: "Average bookstore owner by day, but by night, a fierce werewolf prowling the cities, fighting for justice!" That made me laugh. It was almost perfectly true: however, my vigilante days of fighting evil were over for me now._

_Those days finished when Valentine fed me to the dogs—and I meant that almost literally. _

Sighing and stretching his arms to the sky, Lucian collapsed in his squashy leather couch, looking around with piercing blue eyes at the bookstore he was slowly, but surely, building around him. The once empty shelves were now swelling with books, and while business was slow, it was better than the slow trickle of customers he had to work with when he first started up from scratch.

Through due diligence, he set up good reputation in the book community, many knowing he'd be the one to go to for odd books on mythology, or rare hardbacks that were usually forgotten in dusty boxes in the attics of deserted mansions. The work was hard, but the rewards were satisfying. Lucian sold those books he could part with, but he kept the rarer, more exclusive ones to himself, intrigued by the details these older books had with illustrations all done by hand, along with the unique calligraphy.

Books were great and all, but they were not the reason he was so motivated to set up shop in this particular industry, or in this neighborhood. Taking off the glasses that were perched crookedly over his now-sweaty nose, he wiped at the lenses with a fistful of his flannel shirt, wondering whether she should call the reason he uprooted his entire life: Jocelyn Fairchild. Actually, she insisted on being called Jocelyn Fray, just as she insisted to Lucian to change his name to Luke Garroway.

Some might have thought that Lucian uprooting his entire life would be too much, no matter what the reason. Yet if Lucian was presented with the choice again, he'd always choose Jocelyn. She was the love of his life, and even if she didn't reciprocate his feelings, he'd give up his life for her and only her.

He didn't need it pointed out that he was a hopeless, love-struck fool.

It could be thought that he was cursed twice; once with the werewolf infection and another time with unrequited love. Though probably not in that order. Even though Lucian felt pain from loving Jocelyn, he wouldn't even consider giving her up.

She was like a drug in every aspect of the word. Jocelyn was beautifully addictive, and he couldn't bear to be without her—she healed him and hurt him all at the same time.

For the moment, he decided against calling Jocelyn; although she accepted his presence in her new life, she was still apprehensive towards the idea of having him spend too much time with her daughter, Clarissa, whom she loved more than anything in the world, and who she swore to keep untainted by the world of Shadowhunters and demons.

Lucian thought that in the long run, hiding her past from her one and only daughter would backfire on Jocelyn, but when he tried to make even a comment of protest towards the plan, anger flashed in her eyes, and she was scarily close to sending him off and escaping elsewhere. And that unspoken threat was what kept him silent; he loathed the idea of once again facing the world alone, only to wonder where Jocelyn was and to ruminate on how helpless he would be to help her.

Here, close enough to where Jocelyn lived, he was able to help her; doing chores, repairing things that had been broken for a long time, occasionally fixing her meals, giving her a shoulder to lean on; one thing Jocelyn missed was that network of friends she could lean on. In the mundane world, she didn't seem to mix well with the normal humans, her eye for seeing things others could not holding her back from ever really welcoming someone.

It was funny, but not in a ha-ha way. She refused to ever fully immerse herself as a mundane, yet she demanded that her only constant link to the real world—the world were everyone could see the truth—was to camouflage within it. The denial of one's true self was surely unhealthy, but he was weak to her. He couldn't find it within himself to protest.

Once the strong alpha of a pack of dozens of collected fierce wolves, Lucian didn't miss the irony that he was brought helpless to his knees by the words of a woman, but an ex-Shadowhunter, no less. His kind and her kind were not meant to mingle.

It didn't matter if Lucius was once part of her world. The scars and bites that marred him, his experience and eventual acceptance of his fate had created an unexplainable rift between them. History showed it'd always be like that.

Hell, he knew that he never really deserved Jocelyn. From the first moment he laid eyes on her; the golden girl with the brightest smile, always surrounded by a kind of indescribable light—Lucian knew she was too good to be true. He was happy enough to be her friend, her companion, someone she could rely on.

Or at least, he kept telling himself that.

Groaning incoherently, Luke stood up and stretched languidly, shaking his head roughly, in the process his eye catching the glint of a photo on the mantle. It was of a small bubbly child, with a gummy smile—Clary was beginning to lose some of her teeth.

Normally, he'd simply smile at the picture, thinking of fond moments he spent babysitting the girl, almost-warm times where he'd help Jocelyn by taking some of the burden.

Today though, he looked—really looked—at the child with a grim face. Past the cute freckles and button nose, past the frizz of red hair, past the chubby cheeks. Lucian stared into the eyes of the seemingly innocent child and wondered.

_Demon_, she called her other child, fear of repetition forcing her to take action against her former husband. Jocelyn had feared her first son with a strength to match that of a sinner meeting his maker. How could she know that it simply wasn't Valentine's genes? How could she know that her daughter wasn't the same?

Luke slapped himself lightly on the forehead. He had no right to think any of those things. He knew Clary—he could pick out her laugh in a sea of noisy bodies. He knew just how much strength to use around her—how much he'd need to lift her tiny, fragile body. No, she couldn't be a demon.

Anyway, Jocelyn told him herself that she saw evidence of the experiments with her own eyes. Whilst she didn't say more, her word was enough for him. It always was.

But if he were to be honest with himself, Lucian was jealous of Clarissa all the same. Not on a personal level, but on a deeper level, he resented what she stood for. A child was a personification of love—and Clary represented a care and affection that Jocelyn once held for Valentine.

Then again, Luke mused, Clary was the reason Jocelyn ran. Ran away and embraced her freedom with wide arms spread. For that alone, Luke would always love the child. No to mention, he'd be hard pressed to loathe something Jocelyn would die for.

His phone vibrated on the table, snapping him out of his thoughts, and he flipped it open, seeing he got a text message.

_Come over for lunch? Clary's been missing her uncle._

Immediately he replied with a yes, and while the idea of lunch with Jocelyn sounded nice, he frowned at the term 'uncle'. He never suggested it, but when Jocelyn did, he said nothing. It just further re-enforced that he'd never be anything more.

Luke walked to the door, grabbing his coat from where it was thrown haphazardly on a stack of books. He was used to it, he told himself firmly. He was used to being the uncle and the friend, not the item of romantic interest.

As much as his stories that lined his store would like to make people believe, all fairytale stories didn't end up with smiles and eternal happiness. Lucian knew that, but he couldn't help but hope.

_All that's left sometimes is optimism, hope and patience. Thank God I've got plenty of that._

**οοʘοο**

**A/N: Didn't turn out the way I'd hoped. Teetered waaay off course. Can you review and tell me if I was good/bad in my characterization?**

**Shameless plug: I've got two other character pieces on Mortal Instruments—Isabella and Alec Lightwood. More are planned; I want to do one shot reflective pieces of every side character. **


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